More Lehigh Valley commuters crossing state lines to get to work, Census data show

The number who travel to jobs in New Jersey and New York has increased, continuing a 20-year pattern, data show.

Commuters get off a Bieber bus from New York City at the park and ride in Hellertown… (Emily Robson, THE MORNING…)

March 04, 2013|By Peter Hall and Eugene Tauber, Of The Morning Call

A smaller slice of the Lehigh Valley's working-age population is commuting across state lines than a decade ago, new U.S. Census Bureau figures show.

The number of workers overall who travel from Lehigh and Northampton counties to jobs in New Jersey, New York and elsewhere has increased, continuing a pattern that has been in place for more than 20 years.

But the size of the Lehigh Valley's workforce also has grown sharply since 2000, meaning that although more people travel out of state for work, that group is a smaller percentage of the whole.

In 2010, 6,398 people crossed the Delaware River from Lehigh County each morning, a number that's up 84 percent since 2000.

In Northampton County, 23,720 workers headed toward the rising sun for work, up about 27 percent since 2000.

In Northampton County, only one in 10 eligible workers travels to jobs out of state, down about a third since 2000.

In Lehigh County, 2.3 percent of workers have jobs out of state, down slightly.

Greg Muhr of Upper Macungie Township travels nearly 60 miles to his job in New Jersey. He is drawn to the quality of life in the Lehigh Valley, solid schools and a connection to the community. Muhr lived minutes from jobs in Lehigh County about 20 years before taking a job with Voltaix, a specialty chemicals manufacturer in Readington Township, Hunterdon County, about six years ago.

The commute takes about an hour — more when there are accidents on Interstate 78 — and the first few months were difficult. But he settled into a routine and finds the trip home time to decompress after a stressful day.

"I like where I'm at and I'm going to stay put," Muhr said. "Being here my entire life, we've got a lot of friends and our neighborhood is a great neighborhood, so it's worth it to stay here."

Muhr's story is similar to other Valley residents who log time on the road in exchange for the region's benefits, said Mike Kaiser, executive director of the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission.

"People are trading off a longer trip to work to satisfy both their work needs and their lifestyles," he said.

For many, that has involved leaving behind higher taxes and a higher cost of living in the New York metro area while hanging onto higher wages.

Between 1990 and 2000, according to Census data, the number of workers from Lehigh County working in New Jersey or other states grew 36 percent. Out-of-state employment among Northampton County residents grew by 21 percent.

Anecdotal evidence showed many were transplants from New York City and North Jersey.

The Census Bureau data published Tuesday is from the American Communities Survey collected between 2006 and 2010, which makes comparison to data collected in the 1990 and 2000 Census surveys difficult.

Overall, 24.5 percent of Northampton County workers leave the county for work — whether it's in another state or a different part of Pennsylvania. Between 1 percent and 2 percent go to Bucks, Monroe or Montgomery counties. About 1,050, or less than 1 percent, travel to Manhattan, according to the Census Bureau data.

Nearly 16 percent of Lehigh County workers travel to another state or county for work. They're more likely to go south or west — with between 2.3 percent and 3.4 percent traveling to Berks, Bucks or Montgomery counties. Manhattan is the commuting destination of 963 Lehigh County residents, while 644 travel to Philadelphia, less than 1 percent of the workforce in each case.

The growth in the number of workers leaving Pennsylvania for work is clearly part of the same pattern, Kaiser said. Although it appears to have been slowed slightly by the recession that began in 2008, Kaiser said he expects it to continue.

The reasons, he and Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation President Don Cunningham said, have a lot to do with geography. Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton are close enough to New York that they have strong economic connections to the larger metropolis.

Good highways make travel between the cities relatively easy, Cunningham noted, and that is starting to work in favor of the Lehigh Valley as a location for businesses. "Certain sectors of industry [are] making the transition from North Jersey to Lehigh Valley, following the workers," he said.

Robert Puentes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, said it's not unusual for areas like New York to influence work and commuting patterns. Pike County is now considered part of the New York statistical area because of commuting.

But across much of the nation, Puentes said, that pattern has slowed, in large part due to the collapse of the housing market and an increase in the cost of fuel.

If the Lehigh Valley is bucking the trend, he said, "there may be something interesting happening there."